“Each time you take someone new fishing and they catch a fish, you plant the seed of potential conservation.” -Joe Humphreys, Quoted in person late Winter 2021
Much of the modern dogmatism in fly angling has to do with the type of fish we are in pursuit of: wild versus stocked fish. Sometimes it can be native fish vs wild fish vs stocked fish. I am going to assume that we are all in the know to the differences between stocked and wild fish. For the purposes of this discussion you can consider native and wild fish to be the same. To make a reductive statement: Wild fish are born in the stream, native fish are indigenous to the stream, stocked fish are deposited in the stream.
Some folks say that “stockies don’t count” and for a long time I agreed. In part this refers to the size of the fish and its devalued worth. To some the size of a stocked fish is inversely proportional to its worth and value. I was one of them, a member of my angling community who used to say: “it’s a nice fish but it doesn’t count, it’s stocked… can’t you see that it’s a stocked fish by the way it looks?” Or “Do you think a wild fish would grow this large and be caught in full sun out of over-fished ‘put and take’ water like this?” Or “It’s orange, it doesn’t count.”
Funny that I remember them so well… they were a few of the last times I ever uttered assertions like that. Maybe I also remember it so well because thinking about it, the same exact thing was said to me at 10 years old about catching a big farm pond large mouth bass. It didn’t count because it was from a closed-off ecosystem and came out of a recent stocked lineage I suppose. I recall smashing in to an emotional wall, I became indignant. It detached me from angling for a long time. And decades later and for slightly different reasons I did and said the same thing to fellow angling pals who just caught, played, and released usually very fine specimens of trout. It’s even documented on my instagram page- posting a photo of a nice brown trout with the caption saying something like “this is a fine fish, too bad it doesn’t count as it is a stockie.” But sentiments can change, and mine changed fast.
“Success is measured in terms of personal satisfaction, which when abundant is the greatest reward of all.” – Charles K. Fox This Wonderful World of Trout, 1963
It was when I started to understand that my fly angling was becoming more and more just practical applications, small acts of conservationism, that I realized I was talking complete noise and even worse acting untrue to myself regarding the wild vs stocked debate. I was literally ignoring the timeline history of my fishing. I held too much value in to the idea that being a skilled and respected fly angler has to do with the quality of fish you care catching, and to some it very much does. My angling pals and I seemed to judge the value of an angler’s skill by the type of fish you become associated with; the wild fish, the weary ones, the conditioned fish that only the finest practitioners of streamcraft can catch. It is indeed a huge part of that formula that creates a top shelf fly fisherman. Moreover, if you can catch a large wild fish in public water?? Well…then you are closer to achieving the hallmark stamp of not only being a fine fly fisher but a well rounded and consistently efficient one (among my pals anyway).
But my feelings didn’t change, I suppose they evolved a bit more towards the side of practicality and clarity. Honestly I really had no say in this, I just began to feel… when it comes to fly angling I am not afraid to say that I am just a passenger sometimes. Maybe that’s a definition for true passion, who knows. My feelings are so strong within areas of this great sport that I wish I could feel a different way or less in earnest in what others may view as trivial details. I began to shift to the philosophy that becoming a real fly angler has to do with stewardship. The size of the fish and the means of catching them are forever secondary to the first principle truths that a healthy biome must be present in which trout can live so we can be fortunate enough in trying to catch them.
I also very much hold on to the feelings that stocked fish are detrimental to the natural ecosystem. The reasons are numerous but my main stance is they are stressors. A healthy system for trout includes cold water. A healthy system is a natural system and a natural system does not have unnatural stocked fish present. This lowers numbers of aquatic insects and baitfish, stressing the available food in the biomass and upsetting the natural cycles of nature. In time it will equate to bad fishing. We can go in to the how and why of reasons in another blog post but in short when larger stocked fish are put in to a body of water where they all at once become the dominant fish, or more dominant fish, by sheer size alone (omitting behavioral characteristics) the smaller wild fish become stressed resulting in less small wild fish to grow in to large wild fish. Even the resident larger wild fish become stressed due in part to differing behavioral characteristics. The usual stressors in nature are slow and gradual, in my humble opinion a factor of stress that is introduced suddenly and in volume, does not cause linear consequences but can be of exponential danger. And this was as still is to an extent some of my basic sentiments about the question of stocked vs wild fish in our waters.
However….
My greatest satisfaction within fly angling has come to show itself in the name of conservation and if it were not for catching a few stocked fish on the fly long ago I would not be where I am today. Of course at the time I did not realize that a few stocked rainbow trout I hooked in West Virginia from a private rod and gun club were the genesis of a practice and philosophy of cold water conservation. It’s very odd to say, even right now at this moment, that my understandings and actions all have their origins rooted in those few stocked fish. “Stockies” are where this all started so for me stockies do indeed count, they help born an advocate for nature, natural systems, and cold water. Diverging positions, I know and I agree, but it is how my story and love of fishing came to develop. How can I be true to the scientific and anecdotal data of fresh water ecology and still advocate for stockies? I think it is as with anything of great importance and worth- the intricacies are many; the organism of nature, viewed though the lens of science and practiced as fly fishing is very complex.
I love Joe and quote him often, so i’m not sorry…. Joe Humphreys was able to really cut through it all and reveal some simplicity by the way he described his sentiments of the matter. He said, almost in passing and to paraphrase: that without those stocked fish we all seem to hate so much, most of us would be golfing.
Stockies do count,
Sean Eagan
Degenerate Angler
Late Autumn 2022
Native and wild fish